New Guide: School Wellness Policy and Practice: Meeting the Needs of Low-Income Students

Posted by on August 18, 2006

[posted from Promising Practices in After School]

As you may know, all local school districts that participate in the National School Lunch Program must develop and implement a school wellness policy by the start of the next school year. Because the districts are required to take a broad look at students’ health and well-being, the local policies should encompass afterschool and summer programs. Some of the issues relevant to afterschool and summer programs are access to meals and snacks, the quality of the food, nutrition education, and physical activity. And the afterschool program staff and the students that participate in the programs can and should be included in the development of the local wellness policy.

The Food Research and Action Center new guide ?School Wellness Policy and Practice: Meeting the Needs of Low-Income Students” (http://www.frac.org/html/news/wellness_guide2006.html), explores including afterschool and summer programs in the wellness policy and offers sample policy language, model programs and key research. The guide addresses the following key issues:

? Family and Community Involvement
? Increasing Access to School Meals, Summer Food, and Afterschool Snacks and Suppers
? Establishing Nutritional Guidelines for All School Foods
? Addressing Cost Concerns about Changing Competitive Food Policies
? Increasing Physical Activity and Recreational Opportunities

The guide is intended to supplement other tools available for designing school wellness policies by providing strategies that address the unique needs of low-income students, families and communities. We hope you will find this to be a useful resource and encourage you to download it and share this link with as many colleagues and school community members as possible: http://www.frac.org/html/news/wellness_guide2006.html

If you have any questions about the new wellness policy requirement or our new guide, feel free to contact me directly.

Take Care, Crystal

Crystal Weedall FitzSimons
Senior Policy Analyst
Food Research and Action Center
[email protected]